Research > Faculty Projects
NIRT: Protein-Aided Nanomanufacturing
Principal Investigator
Karl F. Bohringer
Sponsor(s)
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Award Period
07/01/2007 - 06/30/2008
Abstract
We describe collaborative research aimed at developing the
molecules, hardware, and software for high throughput
protein-aided manufacturing over length scales spanning
nanometers to macroscopic dimensions. The approach is
called orchestrated structure evolution (OSE).
Conceptually, OSE begins with a solid model representation
of an object composed of one or several inorganic
materials. Combinatorial biology is used to discover a set
of inorganic synthesizing polypeptides (ISPs) that control
the nucleation, growth rate, and crystallinity of the
target inorganic material. We call ISPs ‘seeds’ because the
target inorganic material grows from them when the seeds
are brought into contact with the appropriate aqueous
electrolyte. Software for OSE requires algorithms to
compute the optimal locations for planting seeds to produce
the highest accuracy object with the fewest number of tool
moves. Hardware for seed planting relies on the protein-
compatible patterning techniques dip-pen nanolithography,
micro-contact printing, and thermo-responsive protein
adsorption (a new technique), as appropriate for the scale
of the object to be built. The final step in OSE is to
immerse the seeded surface in the growth electrolyte,
resulting in the spontaneous ‘fleshing’ of the object with
functional inorganic material.
The OSE approach-intelligent seeding of growth-regulating polypeptides that promote spontaneous space- filling─dramatically accelerates object fabrication by minimizing the tool path needed to orchestrate complex hierarchical builds. We describe a research plan that seeks to understand how each step in the OSE approach impacts the precision, quality, and throughput of this novel protein- aided manufacturing method. We use the construction of three dimensional ZnO-based excitonic solar cells as a test bed for evaluating the integrated OSE approach.
Updates or corrections to this page should be sent to gheaton@u.washington.edu.
